rc FAQ list

rc FAQ list

[Alan Watson]

I have put a revised version of the prototype rc FAQ list up for
anonymous FTP as /pub/rc/rc-FAQ on oldp.astro.wisc.edu.

Many, many thanks to everyone who commented on earlier versions or sent
me details of systems on which rc works (as far as I can tell, just
about any system that begins with a U or ends with an X).  Most of the
improvements between v1.19 and v2.5 are directly the result of these
comments.

I very much welcome comments on the current version, and will maintain
an errata file as before.  I'd like to submit this for approval to the
news.answers moderator (to appear in comp.unix.shell, comp.answers, and
news.answers) sometime in the next couple of months (depending on your
comments).

Alan.

P.S. I had a look at the zsh FAQ whilst I was revising -- the features
just blew my mind, but nothing prepared me for the final line of the
acknowledgements.  Is it just me, or do these people really have their
own version of reality?

Re: rc FAQ list

[Scott Schwartz]

| Is it just me, or do these people really have their
| own version of reality?

Doesn't everybody?  :-)

A friend of mine used to say, "who needs tcsh when you can run
rc in an emacs shell buffer".  

Anyway, zsh does have some good ideas that it wouldn't hurt rc to adopt
(ok, ok, es maybe.:-)).   My two favorites: builtin read, and recursive
glob.

Re: rc FAQ list

[Dennis Colarelli]

> Alan.
> 
> P.S. I had a look at the zsh FAQ whilst I was revising -- the features
> just blew my mind, but nothing prepared me for the final line of the
> acknowledgements.  Is it just me, or do these people really have their
> own version of reality?
> 

My experience on design is that:
   1. It's easy to make things complicated
   2. It's difficult to make things easy
Trying to be as objective as possible, I find zsh more like (1)
and rc like (2) (i.e., the design of rc requires less cognative
dissonance during application than zsh).  What's really wierd in
this analysis is how zealous people are about their favorite shell.

Dennis
rc uber allis

Re: rc FAQ list

[Richard Brooksby]

> Anyway, zsh does have some good ideas that it wouldn't hurt rc to
> adopt (ok, ok, es maybe.:-)).  My two favorites: builtin read, and
> recursive glob.

I used zsh before I discovered rc, but for one reason only: recursive
globbing.  Zsh's globbing is better than find(1).  I want a zsh-style
recursive globbing program so that I can do:

  ls `{glob ****/*(W^@)}

I realize that I could rip the code out of zsh, but I just don't have
the time.
---
Richard Brooksby <richard@harlequin.co.uk>
ML Project and Collaborative Research / Harlequin
+44 223 872522 (voice) / +44 223 872519 (fax)

Re: rc FAQ list

[Tim.Goodwin]

>   ls `{glob ****/*(W^@)}

Can you enlighten us as to what this means?

Tim.

rc FAQ list

[Alan Watson]

Coming to a news feed near you.  Multiple times, in fact.  There's
nothing quite like screwing up before an audience of thousands of your
peers when it comes to putting a crimp in your day, is there?

I'll be making future (single) postings on or around the 5th of each
month.

The major difference between this version and the last is that the
heterogeneous cluster section has become more sane

Thanks to everyone who helped get this of the ground, 

Alan.

Re: rc FAQ list

[Alan Watson]

To clarify my last message, the final line of the acknowledgements for
the zsh FAQ list is:

	The world is eternally in the debt of Paul Falstad for
	inventing zsh in the first place.

and it is this, and not the list of features in zsh, that causes me to
doubt the author's grip on reality.  Even the perl hackers haven't
deified Larry Wall.